Skip to main content
Main

Black Puddings

A blood sausage made with blood, grits, bread crumbs, milk, suet, eggs, herbs, and hog's fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Winter savory and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 780 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Black Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Stir the blood with salt until cold.

  2. Soak the grits overnight in a quart of blood.

  3. Soak the bread crumbs in slightly more than 2 quarts of hot milk.

  4. Prepare the guts by washing, turning, and scraping them with salt and water, changing the water several times.

  5. Chop winter savory, thyme, pennyroyal, pepper, salt, cloves, allspice, ginger, and nutmeg finely.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the chopped herbs with beef suet and beaten, strained eggs.

  2. Combine the soaked bread, grits, and seasoning mixture until well mixed.

  3. As you fill the cleaned skins, add diced hog's fat at intervals.

Cook and serve

  1. Tie the skins in links, leaving them half filled, and boil in a large kettle, pricking them as they swell to prevent bursting.

  2. Once boiled, lay them between clean cloths or on straw until cool, then hang them in the kitchen.

  3. To use, scald them in water for a few minutes, wipe, and place them in a Dutch oven.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Winter savory + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together780 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Winter savory + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together690 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Blood
Binds the mixture and gives the pudding its dark color and rich flavor.
Grits
Provides bulk and a firm, starchy structure that holds the filling together.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in milk, they add moisture and a soft, tender texture.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it cooks.
Eggs
Help bind the filling so it sets firmly when cooked.
Hog's fat
Diced pieces melt during boiling, leaving pockets of richness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Pricking the skins as they boil. Filling expands and steam builds inside the casing as it cooks. Pricking lets steam escape so the skins do not burst, while leaving the links half filled gives the mixture room to swell.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, beef, egg, winter savory, thyme, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, beef, egg, winter savory, thyme, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More black pudding recipes

Irish 6French 3 See all 71 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes